Recent Posts

5351

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013 PLEDGE - Contractor's Work Log

« Last post by tomos on November 20, 2012, 07:13 AM »

There is no option to minimise, the app is always on top. [The transparency looks good ]
I can see why you might do it like that but I'm not sure I like it.

If we could minimise it to just the titlebar would be better -
that shows the time done, maybe adding the job-name to it would be nice.

EDIT/ I guess I can do that by reducing the windows size - would be more impressive/professional looking though if it worked via the usual minimise button in the titlebar (imo)

EDIT2/ I was so busy with what all was going on, I forgot to check out the tray icon
I see I can minimise to tray. I just activated some other properties there - looking good 

5352

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013 PLEDGE - Contractor's Work Log

« Last post by tomos on November 20, 2012, 07:09 AM »

When I click stop (and add comment) the GUI reverts to showing 'Start' but does not reflect the work just done in the time/cost shown.
When I click Start again - it then shows the work that was done in the previous stint.

5353

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013 PLEDGE - Contractor's Work Log

« Last post by tomos on November 20, 2012, 07:06 AM »

Re the GUI:
It's portable - that's nice.
I extracted it to my portable apps folder
Win7 64bit

On startup I get the error
---------------------------
Work Log Timer
---------------------------
The system cannot find the file specified.
---------------------------
-
it created an ini file, but I got the message again on restarting.

I logged in okay.
I chose my timelog to use, clicked [Start] and got this error:



I selected 'Yes' and it seems to be running okay.
Will report back later

EDIT/ if I click No, it seems to work okay too :-)

5354

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by tomos on November 20, 2012, 04:17 AM »

^ I had to think
-
he didnt get what he wanted?

5355

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013 PLEDGE - Contractor's Work Log

« Last post by tomos on November 20, 2012, 04:15 AM »

Thanks relipse,
I'll give it a go then

5356

Living Room / Re: Anything wrong with formatting a USB stick in NTFS?

« Last post by tomos on November 19, 2012, 12:50 PM »

I have no idea/opinion myself

but there's this:
http://serverfault.c...ld-be-formatted-ntfs

5357

General Software Discussion / Re: Browser Bunch 1.4.2.0 - with BBSS

« Last post by tomos on November 19, 2012, 12:13 PM »

But, yeah, whatever pill that artist was taking probably wasn't purchased with a prescription.

-MilesAhead (November 19, 2012, 10:27 AM)

lol, these days you wouldnt know

5358

General Software Discussion / Re: Thoughts on this sort of UI styling?

« Last post by tomos on November 19, 2012, 12:10 PM »

Do show us an update at some stage!

5359

Living Room / Re: "a-guide-to-legal-marijuana-use-in-seattle"

« Last post by tomos on November 19, 2012, 12:08 PM »

a-guide-to-legal-marijuana-use-in-seattle

-joiwind (November 19, 2012, 11:56 AM)

From the police department (seattle.gov) -
has a nice tone to it, very droll at times.

*This post has been updated since its initial publication to include more legalese and fewer references to narcotics dogs which, as it turns out, are still a confusing, complicated issue still under review.

5360

Living Room / Re: How Much Do You Trust Wikipedia?

« Last post by tomos on November 19, 2012, 08:12 AM »

I like Bacon!

-Stoic Joker (November 18, 2012, 03:39 PM)

Stoic Joker and 4 others Like Bacon

5361

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013 PLEDGE - Contractor's Work Log

« Last post by tomos on November 19, 2012, 08:01 AM »

Did anyone try the GUI for Microsoft Windows?
downloadable client is here: http://cworklog.com/.../WorkLogGui_0887.zip
Jim

-relipse (November 18, 2012, 12:58 PM)

can I synch my current web info with the app ?

5362

General Software Discussion / Re: Thoughts on this sort of UI styling?

« Last post by tomos on November 19, 2012, 07:42 AM »

looks nice 

The 4 grouped areas have a lot of impact, and work like bullets - very nice. The black/gray text is a nice touch, but make the black text shorter. e.g.

Elevate to admin privileges.
Run as a service.
Run as a desktop application.
etc.

-Renegade (November 19, 2012, 06:37 AM)

I'm not sure if this is exactly what Renegade meant, but I think it would be better to swap the black and grey text -
i.e. the first point would be:

Run as administrator
Elevate itself to full admin priviliges
or at least, as Ren says, make the black text shorter.
The grey is imo better for more info in case someone doesnt understand the brief & to-the-point black text.

5363

Living Room / Re: Corporations crippling U.S.

« Last post by tomos on November 18, 2012, 10:18 AM »

It's a very good interview, lots of interesting aspects to it.

On a very practical note:

DCJ: We pay four times what the French do for a triple play package of cable, Internet and telephone — and they get worldwide TV, not just domestic; their Internet is ten times faster and instead of two country calling, they get long-distance to 70 countries at no extra charge. All that for $38 compared to the U.S. average of $160 including taxes. By one measure we pay 38 times as much as the Japanese per bit of information on the Internet. In states where the electric utilities were broken up so power generation could be a competitive business prices did not fall. Instead since 1999 they rose 48% more than inflation, compared to just 8 percent in states that retained traditional regulation. Everywhere there is a lack of competition, or only the appearance of competition, we pay way too much.

SP: In your book, you single out telephone carriers — is it really in their interests to hold back universal broadband services? Can you quantify the impact? DCJ: Remarkably we have created a system in which the AT&T - Verizon duopoly makes bigger profits by holding back the Internet. Verizon will make fiber optic service, the Information Superhighway, available to just 16 million households, not all of whom will buy. AT&T provides fiber to the street, then old-fashioned coaxial cable to your home or business. And if you live in a rural area or even cities like Rochester, where I live in Western New York, your region is never scheduled to get fiber optic service. Building the universal fiber optic service out economic competitors are all building or have built would encourage the invention of new services and products in America, but instead those will be developed in other countries. After all, if there is no way to use a service why would it be invented? ... One study, and it is only one study, says that a universal Information Superhighway at the fastest speeds in the world (we average about 5 percent of the top speeds) would increase economic output by two-thirds.

5364

Living Room / Re: How Much Do You Trust Wikipedia?

« Last post by tomos on November 18, 2012, 10:02 AM »

And I find that, in a way, wikipedia is more reliable than standards sources, because you can look at the history and talk pages - gives a pretty good indication of topics where something is afoul. Obviously you need to fact-check, but you'd have to do that with "traditional" sources as well.

-f0dder (November 18, 2012, 08:28 AM)

I agree.

I've been involved in a talk page discussion re a political topic, and it was a very frustrating experience. But it was interesting all the same. My point is that looking at the talk page in question (I dont want to link) would give a very good idea of the problems, tensions, and different viewpoints re the topic, yet these were barely reflected in the page itself (which upset many people, me included).

5365

General Software Discussion / Re: Tips for Windows 8 (got any?)

« Last post by tomos on November 17, 2012, 06:34 PM »

for those who buy laptops with one big partition for everything:
(probably valid for most other win OS's as well)

Shrink/expand partitions within Windows 8.
...
I shrunk my OS partition (C) using Disk Management - it refused to shrink much but when system restore was turned off, & old restore points deleted, it then offered to go down to 20GB (FWIW, I gave it 100GB). System restore are those fixed files you can see in the middle of the partition when defragging. More info here:
http://superuser.com...with-unmovable-files

5366

General Software Discussion / Re: Creating automatic bookmarks in a pdf

« Last post by tomos on November 17, 2012, 04:11 PM »

a-pdf.com require ghostcript from sourceforge.
A little complicated.

-Contro (November 17, 2012, 03:53 PM)

what's complicated about that?
maybe the way a-pdf interacts with ghostcript? - I've never used a-pdf but I do use PDFCreator (also on sourceforge) as my PDF printer - it automatically installs ghostscript.

5367

General Software Discussion / Re: Tips for Windows 8 (got any?)

« Last post by tomos on November 17, 2012, 03:46 PM »

Backup / create an image:
Win+W to search settings - search for 'Windows 7..." - open "Windows 7 File Recovery" -a weird hangover name, in spite of it simply being called "Backup or Restore" in Win7.
~ Restore seems a bit buggy here - it cant find my image/backup on an external usb hd. But if I use the restore disk (dont forget to create it!) I can find the backup okay. Helped by Windows 8 forums tutorials (NOTE: I just wanted to check that it could find the backup - I didnt need to restore, so I didnt try to).
System Restore - Win+W to search settings for same and you're covered (also available via control panel)

-tomos (November 15, 2012, 02:41 PM)

added some backup quirks ...

5368

Living Room / Re: ~$300 Laptop/Netbook recommendations

« Last post by tomos on November 17, 2012, 03:11 PM »

$329 - TOSHIBA Satellite C855-S5231 Notebook Intel Pentium B970(2.3GHz) 15.6" 4GB Memory etc
http://www.newegg.co...Item=N82E16834214863

The Intel Pentium B970 is a dual core processor for entry-level laptops. It is based on the Sandy Bridge architecture but many of the features like Turbo Boost for the CPU part, HyperThreading, AES, Virtualization (VT-x and VT-d), Trusted Execution or Intel Quick Sync are deactivated. The Pentium B970 integrates a graphics card called Intel HD Graphics that is based on the HD Graphics 2000 clocked at 650 / 1100 (with Turbo Boost).

-
http://www.notebookc...ocessor.67248.0.html

5369

General Software Discussion / Re: Strategies to stay with Windows 7 as long as possible

« Last post by tomos on November 17, 2012, 02:56 PM »

I'm very impressed by how fast win 8 can boot - and close down. Admittedly I have very little software installed and very little starting with windows, but this is way faster than a clean win7 install - I remember being impressed by that being around the 30 second mark.
I just booted Win8 in well under 10 seconds, and that involved me clicking on the login page (dont currently have a password).

5370

General Software Discussion / Re: Tips for Windows 8 (got any?)

« Last post by tomos on November 17, 2012, 02:48 PM »

^ I added a documantation section to post #1

I signed up for the forum linked below when it first opened. But I don't participate often as I don't intend to get W8. If their Vista and Windows Seven forums are any indication, this forum should be a wealth of Tutorials, lists of free W8 software, W8 news, and of course, categorized sob-forums to post various problems.

  Windows 8 Forum

-MilesAhead (November 17, 2012, 09:04 AM)

I was hoping that existed -
I had found another forum - forumswindows8.com - which didnt really impress.

5371

General Software Discussion / Re: Tips for Windows 8 (got any?)

« Last post by tomos on November 17, 2012, 03:53 AM »

Thanks ewemoa,
I've added those and some new ones* to the first post. (I've roughly grouped by desktop/home-page)
That's one of those posts that would benefit from a wikistyle option.


*Disable Lock Screen / Take screenshots / Prevent [Media] Files Opening in Metro

5372

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by tomos on November 17, 2012, 02:50 AM »

I think the tip was more distracting than anything.
It's a wheat beer against the light just after pouring in the wheaty end of the bottle. You can see the yeast sediment sinking. Schneider Weisse Tap7 - unusually dark for a wheat beer.
In retrospect I'm not sure why the embarrassment - I guess I reckon I drink too much
TMI maybe :p

5373

General Software Discussion / Re: Tips for Windows 8 (got any?)

« Last post by tomos on November 16, 2012, 05:56 PM »

^ well it's a fair enough tip for those of us who havent already indulged

One thing I presume they'll bring in in SP1 is the option to boot to the desktop (I find it ludicrous that the option is not already there).

Till then you could try this Skip Metro Suite [UNTESTED - I'll give it a go myself sometime in the next few days]
http://winaero.com/c...php?comment.news.103
the site was recommended by a user (with a few hundred posts) on Neowin (but no discussion about it)

They have a few interesting tweaks - download page:
http://winaero.com/download.php?list.2

5374

Living Room / Re: ~$300 Laptop/Netbook recommendations

« Last post by tomos on November 16, 2012, 05:23 PM »

Just some thoughts:

The screen for the T400 has a 16:10 format AFAIK, usually with quite high rsolution -
and I think it's supposed to have a reasonably good quality image (but there's been lots of incarnations of it so hard to say) - probably bright, matt, maybe the blacks not so black though.

I think the screen is important - most screens today are 16:9, usually @ 1366x768, and at that price I dont think you'll get much quality new (you might get similar brightness, but probably not matt, and lower resolution) - but others might be happy enough to sacrifice that for more CPU.

5375

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by tomos on November 16, 2012, 04:52 PM »

Great you caught that, but you should be mentioned as well for 6100 (and a few) posts
 
 (see attachment in previous post)

-Ath (November 16, 2012, 03:10 PM)

any guesses what my new avatar is?
dunno will this help or distract: I'm actually slightly embarrassed about it (which I guess means it's not a planet)